Chicken skewers are my favourite kind of barbeque. They are light, stomach filling and with the proper company, the perfect summer lunch. Since the hottest time of the year is around, I decided on this lunch when a friend visited me, because we both like this kind of food. I think the most important reason however, is that this is very easy to prepare and I didn’t want to sweat over a hot stove. I wanted to talk to my friend and discuss the issues of the day. With very few ingredients and only 30 minutes this is an excellent lunch. Let’s make it!

Get 12 large wooden skewers and soak them in water for at least 1 hour. In a small bowl, mix the oil and seasoning and set it aside.

Preheat your oven grill to medium high heat. Alternating between vegetables and meat, thread them on the skewers. Using a brush, brush the chicken and vegetables with the aromatic oil. Broil for 12 minutes, flip and continue broiling for another ten minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

Serve it with warm pitta drizzled with olive oil and my favourite coleslaw salad with yoghurt dressing. Enjoy it with a nice, cold beer and with the best company you can get!

You know that time of the day when you want to just relax on your patio with friends and discuss the issues of the day? Well, now that is summer this feeling creeps up on me more than ever. I was recently invited to a friend’s house to sit outside on the veranda and dine with him and his family. His parents cooked a lovely meal of kebabs and lasagne and we had a lovely time. The beer, wine and ice cold water was flowing, we sat there and we talked for a good portion of the night while we were dining. I had to bring something to the feast however. I wasn’t going to go there empty handed. People who know me, know that I don’t just appear empty handed. So I asked my friend what kind of dessert he would like to try that I never made for him before. He told me that he tried while he was in Thessaloniki a dessert called baba. That is the Greek name for the savarin. A light fluffy cake, decorated with cream, basted in flavourful syrup and decorated with seasonal fruit. So I went ahead and prepared a lovely savarin, dipped it in amazing dark rum syrup and decorated it with lovely vanilla flavoured double cream and summer fruits. The recipe is time consuming and you will definitely need a mixer with a hook because you cannot do this by hand (unless you want to knead for an hour or something) but I can tell you that it is definitely worth it. Happy cooking!

In a bowl add the milk with the yeast and mix. Set it aside for 10 minutes until the yeast is activated. Add it to your mixer bowl. Add the salt, sugar, eggs, egg yolk and the flour. Using the hook attachment, beat in medium speed add the melted butter in stages until the dough comes together. The dough will be sticky and will stick to your fingers. That is the way it is supposed to be, don’t add any more flour. Once it comes together place it in a bowl and cover it with a towel to proof for 70-90 minutes.

Get your cake form, butter it and dust it with flour. Add the now risen dough in the cake form, cover it with a tea towel again and let it rise one more time for another 70 to 90 minutes. Once it has risen, bake it in a preheated oven of 180 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes until it is golden in colour.

Once baked, take it out of the form while still warm. Make 5-6 holes in the bottom using a sharp knife. In a large pan the cake can fit in, add the sugar, water and rum over medium to high heat. Wait until the sugar has dissolved, take it off the heat, place the savarin in the pan holes down, and baste it with the syrup. The cake will be heavier now that has absorbed the syrup so carefully transfer it to a platter. Using a brush, brush it all over with the apricot jam. Once the savarin has cooked down, decorate it with the whipped vanilla cream and the summer berries.

Summer is here. The hot weather demands for company in the backyard, soft music playing, cool drinks and a special meal. Last night, my best man and his wife invited me over to their lovely house for such a dinner.

The table was set under the beautiful large lemon tree, classical jazz was playing over and there was a huge pitch of margaritas waiting for us. Their maid of honour flew from Greece to see us so we planned this ahead. There were colourful lights hanging from the lemon tree and almost no sound coming from anywhere except from the pc playing those smooth tunes.

I suggested we made a dinner that was festive and people could help themselves. Nothing formal, but nice, summery, a good company to our margaritas and enough to fill us up. I offered to cook and they do the drinks. So I prepared a lovely Caribbean/Mexican chicken with lots of peppers, spices and chicken. The /Caribbean goes to the fact that the spices we used were a mixture of the two cuisines. I also made guacamole.

We had a lovely night, we laughed, we drank, we ate and we passed the night chatting away and having fun. You can find all the recipes below to prepare your own summery feast to treat you friends and loved ones.

Cut the avocado in half; remove the pit and using a teaspoon empty the flesh in a small bowl. Using a fork melt the avocado into a paste. Add all of the ingredients, season to your liking and mix thoroughly. Taste it. Adjust any seasoning and acidity using extra lemon juice, cover with plastic wrap and set it in the fridge until ready to serve.

In a mortar place half the garlic cloves and a pinch of salt. Smash them using the pestle to a paste. Add the cumin seeds, paprika, chilli flakes and oregano and pound it until it is thoroughly mixed. Add some rounds of freshly grounded pepper and mix it using a teaspoon. Add to this mixture 3 tablespoons of olive oil and create a paste. In a large bowl add the chicken pieces and the mixture you have just created. Using your hands mix the chicken with the seasoning until the chicken pieces are all well covered. Cover and let it sit aside for 30 minutes to marinate well.

In a large frying pan with a lid over medium to high heat add the rest of the olive oil. When it is hot, add the onions and peppers. Let them sauté for 2 minutes stirring often. Add the garlic and give it a stir. Add the chicken with the marinade. Lower the heat to medium, cover the pan and cook for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Take off the heat, mix in the coriander and let the pan covered for the food to rest and the flavours to develop for 5 more minutes. In the meantime, chop some fresh lettuce and warm your tortillas. Set up the table with a plate of tortilla chips, the guacamole, the sour cream, the chicken and vegetables, the warm tortillas and the margarita pitcher.

Enjoy a lovely evening with your friends and loved ones, under the summer night sky with the company of the smooth jazz on the radio!

TIPS:
– You can substitute the coriander with parsley
-You may increase the heat by adding more chilli flakes in the marinade. This recipe is very mild as my friends don’t like spicy food.
-Lemons can be switched for limes if you have available.
-I used a mix of dark and white meat for the fajitas because darker meat that is deboned has more flavour than the chicken breast. Feel free to use only either if you prefer.

It’s been almost two months since I had something posted. Many reasons behind it. Each one more boring than the other one. So I will not bore you with details of my personal life. However, in the past couple of months I haven’t stopped cooking and baking. I had friends over, I cooked for my family, I made a couple of projects with my nephews. All in all, it was a busy couple of months. I have a recipe for you today that will definitely hit the spot. This pasta dish has all the qualifications for a lovely dinner for two, a family feast or a treat for you when you want to curl on the couch with a glass of wine and watch some crappy movie. Yeap, I said it. Crappy. Because we all know, although we hesitate to admit, we kind of have a soft spot for cheesy, horrible movies be that horror with bad CGI, sappy romantic comedies or even “cultured” cinema. I will not elaborate on the last one, as I have watched my fair share of movies that have been glorified and praised by critics but by the end of them I felt like I aged 58 years or lost the will to live. So we won’t go there. But a man has to eat! So on with the recipe. A lovely tagliatelle recipe with chicken. Let’s make it!

Boil the pasta according to the package instructions until al dente. Strain it and drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil on it. Mix it so that it doesn’t stick together. Keep half a cup of the boiling liquid aside.

In a large pan add the rest of the olive oil over medium to high heat. Add the chicken and cook it until browned on all sides. Add the pepper, onion and the garlic and cook 2 more minutes. Add the brandy and lower the heat to medium. Let it evaporate for 2 minutes and add the wine. Scrape the bottom of the pan to get all the bits that stuck to the bottom and let it simmer for 4 minutes. Add two tablespoons of the reserved pasta liquid. Add the cream and season with salt and pepper to taste. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly and add the pasta to the pan. Add almost all the parsley and give it a stir so that the sauce covers the pasta and everything is mixed completely. Get it off the stove, sprinkle with the rest of the parsley and the grated Parmesan. Serve it immediately with a chilled glass of white wine!

When my friends come over and I want to treat them well, I will do my absolute best. This. Just this statement.

It was one of those gloomy afternoons that I wanted to just crawl into bed and wake up after 20 years. I got a call from my friend to ask how was I and if I wanted to have coffee within the hour. I said sure. It would have been a pleasure. So I got my sorry arse off the sofa and started thinking. He has a great affection for strawberries and white chocolate (yes, all the desserts you see here that contain these two ingredients are made for him) so I opened the freezer and took the strawberries out.

I wanted to do something that he didn’t have before. So I decided to go with a crème Brûlée. We prepared the coffee once the dessert was ready and we didn’t talk much. We ate 4 ramekins of crème Brûlée between us. We probably needed insulin shots after wards but it was totally worth it! Let’s make it!

Preheat your oven to 165 degrees Celsius. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and the sugar until pale. Set them aside. In a smaller bowl, chop the white chocolate to small pieces. In a small pan, heat the milk, cream and vanilla over medium to high heat, stirring constantly to prevent the milk from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Pour the hot milk over the white chocolate and stir to melt it. As soon as it melts and it is mixed evenly, start pouring it over the egg yolks beating constantly so that they don’t cook. Now you have the mixture ready. Set it aside. Prepare your ramekins. Place a few strawberries in each one, fill them with the mixture up to 2/3 and add a few more strawberries. Place the now filled ramekins in a large pan and fill the pan until it is half way up the ramekins. Bake them in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until the top is set but still jiggles.

Allow them to cool to room temperature, and set them in the fridge for 2 hours.

I don’t own a blowtorch to make the caramel on top so what I did was, I made caramel out of sugar. Just pour some sugar in a pan over medium to high heat and let it melt. Be careful when handling hot caramel; it is scathing. Once melted, I used a spoon and quickly drizzled it over the custards. Enjoy your crème Brûlée with a cup of coffee and in the company of a dear friend!

Typical Saturday night. I went to my parent’s house in the village, played a bit with my nephews, started creating a new project about the universe. I was expecting this Saturday to go as all other where I was just laying on the sofa watching a movie and munching on pop corn. Apparently, it didn’t. I got a call from one of my best friends and he told me he had a surprise. He purchased from a lovely butcher shop here in Limassol 3 aged T-bone steaks and he was coming over to cook them. So I went home, prepared some oven vegetables, a loaf of garlic bread with cheese and we cooked them to perfection. The first one we cooked it rare and it was the juiciest steak I have ever had. We devoured it while we were cooking the other two (you know, to have as a proper meal). We prepared them medium rear with garlic, rosemary and lots of butter. It really was a great steak. A great Saturday night in!

Happy new year everybody! Another year gone by and I am none the wiser. It was a special occasion when we met with a friend. We wanted to celebrate an achievement and a glorious baked cheesecake was the cake to go. So I wanted to impress him (as you do) because I always want to show my friends that I appreciate and love them. Cheesecake is one of his favourites, so I went over and decided to make a baked cheesecake with strawberries. Gordon Ramsay gives a lovely recipe in his home cooking books so I said that I was making that. I changed it a bit and for your pleasure, here it is. Let’s get going!

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Butter and then dust with a little bit of icing sugar a cake tin with a spring bottom. In a small bowl put 1/3 of the chopped strawberries with 1 tablespoon of icing sugar. Mix it and set it aside.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese and sugar until well incorporated. Add the beaten eggs in three batches while beating until everything is combined. Add the melted white chocolate, the flour, lemon zest and vanilla and beat well until incorporated. Then fold through 2/3 of the chopped strawberries.

Add the mixture in the prepared cake tin and tap it against the counter so that all the air bubbles escape. Bake the cheesecake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes until set on the edges but wobbling slightly in the middle.

Once cooked, let the cake to come to room temperature and remove it from the tin, running a knife around the edges to loosen it if necessary. Serve a large wedge of the cheesecake with some of the remaining strawberries and some of the liquid that was released by the fruit. Enjoy it with good company and a large cup of coffee or tea!

You can have the mellow voice of Gordon Ramsay to guide you through this by clicking on the link below: